Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday January 17, 2014

Warwick Bookstore La Jolla

From 2009.

Gar Anthony Haywood is the award winning author of the Aaron Gunner series, two thrillers written as Ray Shannon, and most recently CEMETERY ROAD.

FAULT LINES by Teri White

One of the greatest compliments a book reviewer ever paid to something I'd written was "the best Elmore Leonard rip-off since Elmore Leonard." Publisher's Weekly was referring to my 2003 standalone MAN EATER, but the reviewer could have easily said the same thing fifteen years earlier about Teri White's terrific crime novel, FAULT LINES (Mysterious Press, 1988). I have yet to come across another book that nails the quirky, deceptively scary flavor of a Dutch Leonard novel quite so flawlessly.

True to the often-imitated but rarely duplicated Leonard formula, White populated FAULT LINES with a cast of off-beat, complex characters and then spun a tale in which their separate misadventures would ultimately collide.

Bryan Murphy is an ex-New York City cop who, forced into early retirement by a near-fatal heart attack, now makes his home in Los Angeles, where's he's bored to tears. So bored that he strikes up an uneasy friendship with an ex-con named Tray Detaglio, who's only recently gotten out of the joint. Detaglio's trying to find his ex-girlfriend Kathryn Daily, a cold-hearted hustler and pole dancer who claimed to be pregnant with his child when he last heard from her, but his clumsy attempts to track her down only land him in jail. When Murphy bails him out, being the only person Detaglio could think of to call for help, the two strike a deal: Murphy will look for Kathryn if Detaglio will take over some home repair work Murphy's weak heart prevents him from tackling himself.

Meanwhile, Kathryn---having aborted Detaglio's child years ago---is shacking up elsewhere in L.A. with two more ex-cons, former cellmates Dwight St. John and Chris Moore. Psychotic career criminals who make Detaglio look like an altar boy, Dwight and Chris seem resigned to pulling one stupid, meaningless liquor store robbery after another, until Kathryn offers them a chance at something much better: the Big, once-in-a-lifetime heist they've always dreamed of pulling. One of Kathryn's many ex-boyfriends, post-Tray Detaglio, was mobbed-up drug dealer Michael Stanzione, and before she left him, she learned all there was to know about where Stanzione likes to keep a cool half-million in his palatial Beverly Hills mansion. . .

Get it? It's a terrific set-up, and White works it all to perfection. Tight plotting, solid dialogue---it's all here. But Kathryn---hot, sexy and oh, so wicked---is the poisoned straw that stirs this drink. Bedding and playing all three men at once---Dwight, Chris and Tray---as if they were suckers in a shell game, she leads the reader on a hardcore thrill ride reminiscent of. . .

Well, yeah: a great Elmore Leonard novel.

Sergio Angelini, THE ALIEN, L.P. Davis
Joe Barone, A MURDER OF CROWS, P.F. Chisholm 
Brian Busby. LINDA FRUM'S GUIDE TO CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES
Bill Crider, PINK VODKA BLUES, Neal Barrett, Jr.
Martin Edwards, SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES, Patrick Quentin
Ray Garraty, ONE HUNDRED APOCALYPSES AND OTHER APOCALYPSES, Lucy Corin
Jerry House, Shared Tomorrows:  Science Fiction in Collaboration edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg (1979)The Great Science Fiction Series edited by Fredrik Pohl, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Joseph Olander (1980)
Nick Jones, MR. CALDER AND MR. BEHRENS, Michael Gilbert
George Kelley. WHAT IF?, ed. by Richard Lupoff
Margot Kinberg, THE CASE OF THE MISSING BOOKS, Ian Sansom 
B.V. Lawson, THE FORTIETH DOOR, Mary Hastings Bradley
Evan Lewis, "One Man Died," Norbert David
Steve Lewis, THE DESTROYER 47: DYING SPACE, Warren Murphy
Todd Mason, CRIMES AND CHAOS by Avram Davidson (Regency 1962); GATEWAYS TO FOREVER: THE STORY OF THE SCIENCE-FICTION [AND FANTASY FICTION] MAGAZINES FROM 1970 TO 1980 by Mike Ashley (Liverpool University Press, 2006
J.F. Norris, ARMADALE, Wilkie Collins
James Reasoner, RHYMES OF TEXAS AND THE OLD WEST, Robert E. Howard
Sai S. THE BEST OF ADVENTURE, VOL 1
Ron Scheer, LAST CHANCE CAMP, G. F. Unger  
Kerrie Smith, THE NURSING HOME MURDER, Ngaio March 
R.T. MUDBOUND, Hilary Jordan
Kevin Tipple.Barry Ergang, THE FLOATING LADY MURDER, Daniel Stashower
Prashant Trikannad, THE RENOS, Wolf Lundgren 
Zybahn, THE WOODROW WILSON DIME, Jack Finney


Our thoughts are with Randy Johnson today, recovering from foot surgery.